


east of the sun and west of the moon, dear

by blackkat



Series: Horoscope Drabbles [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 22:16:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17252387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Before he follows, Shisui takes one more look out the cold glass, and shivers. He can hear the floe grinding against the surrounding ice, an eerie, disconcerting sound, like a massive beast growling in the darkness. The howl of the wind is a high, lonely counterpoint, a forsaken sound, and Shisui grits his teeth and forces himself to ignore it.He’ll get used to the sound someday. He won't have a choice.





	east of the sun and west of the moon, dear

**Author's Note:**

> From Normal Horoscopes on Tumblr:
> 
> Gemini: A window overlooking the ice floe. At night you can hear the colossal sheets of frozen ground grinding against each other. The wind howls.

Shisui doesn’t know why he’s here.

Well, that’s not entirely true. He know how the tributes work—one sacrifice every hundred years, sent to the furthest reaches of the north and then never seen again. But he doesn’t know why it was _him_ , can't understand why Fugaku wanted him out of the capital so desperately that he’d go to these lengths.

It worked, whatever his plan was. Shisui stares out at the ice floe beyond the window, and even though the palace is fairly warm, he can feel the cold deep in his bones. There's no leaving this place, not unless he wants to trek across a hundred miles of arctic wasteland with no map, no guide, no markers. He was brought here, a prize won, and now there's no escape.

Shaking himself, Shisui turns away from the window, checking the clock on the mantlepiece and then glancing over at the door that connects his room to his husband’s. It’s still tightly closed, like it has been since Shisui got here, and he’s not brave enough to open it himself, to push in uninvited.

Dinner is soon, though. Carefully formal, carefully arranged, decadent and lavish and fit for the emperor’s palace even more than anything Fugaku's tables ever hosted. A mystery, so far out in the middle of the snows, but Shisui hasn’t quite dared ask about that, either. Especially when his husband has never deigned to join him there, either.

There's a quiet knock at the door, a light rap of knuckles, and when Shisui calls for them to enter the door slides open. A small girl, golden-haired and solemn, leans in, and says politely, “My lord, dinner is ready.”

“Thanks, Yugito,” Shisui manages, and the girl nods sharply and disappears back into the corridor. She doesn’t talk much, or at least, she doesn’t talk to _Shisui_. He’s heard her get practically chatty with the green-haired girl he sees sometimes, and with two of the smaller children who have the run of the palace but seem to avoid Shisui's wing.

Before he follows, Shisui takes one more look out the cold glass, and shivers. He can hear the floe grinding against the surrounding ice, an eerie, disconcerting sound, like a massive beast growling in the darkness. The howl of the wind is a high, lonely counterpoint, a forsaken sound, and Shisui grits his teeth and forces himself to ignore it.

He’ll get used to the sound someday. He won't have a choice.

When Yugito leads him into the banquet hall, though, there's something different. Shisui notices it immediately in the way Utakata is moving as he lays out the food, light and quicker, with an unfamiliar smile on his face. Through an open door, he can see Han, the huge man who came to fetch him from the border, laughing with the two little boys as they sit balanced on his shoulders. And, on the table, right across from Shisui's chair, another place is set.

Shisui freezes, caught off guard. He hasn’t heard any movement from the connected bedroom, hasn’t heard his husband, hasn’t _seen_ him. but now, after a month of waiting, he’s finally coming down to dinner?

“Are you going to sit down?” Utakata asks, not nearly as cold and impatient as he normally seems. He’s even smiling, and it might be eerier than the grinding of the ice floes.

Numbly, Shisui sinks down into the chair Yugito pulls out for him, glancing at the other place setting again. “Is it a special occasion?” he asks, though the joke falls flat.

Utakata blinks, tips his head. “The lord just returned,” he says. “The Snow Queen always gains power in the winter. We’re past the solstice now, though, and the fighting will turn in our favor.”

Shisui wonders if this happens every winter, a slow, steady victory from solstice to solstice, and then a creeping loss as his husband wages a war he can't win. A repeating cycle, dragging on with no end. And Shisui is in the middle of it now.

“Oh,” he says, because suddenly Han's _you can't meet the lord yet, be patient_ makes far more sense. Not a conspiracy to avoid Shisui, but…a war, fought somewhere beyond the palace’s walls.

“He’s on his way down,” Utakata says, distracted, and glances through the door to where Han is dangling the blond boy by his ankles. A smile flickers across his face, and he says, “Lord Kurama would have been up to see you earlier, but he was with the children after he returned.”

“You mean,” a sharp voice says, low, with an edge of a growl beneath it, “that they jumped me the minute I got in the door.”

Startled, Shisui twitches, then jerks to look over at the door. The man entering is small, but stocky, with dark skin and fiery red hair cut at his chin. Red eyes, too, fixed on Utakata with something that’s probably meant to be displeasure but reads like amusement instead.

“Yes,” Utakata says, with a perfectly innocent smile. “That would be exactly what I mean.”

Kurama rolls his eyes, then tips his chin at the doorway. “Go help Han put them to bed,” he says. “Since you're feeling so all-knowing tonight.”

Utakata hides a laugh behind his sleeve and goes, closing the door behind him.

Leaving Shisui alone with new husband, too.

Shisui swallows, then pushes to his feet, turning to face Kurama. He’d been expecting…big. Some burly warrior, or maybe a creature. One of the more colorful rumors in the capital claimed Kurama was a dragon who breathed ice and lived beneath the arctic waters on a bed of pearls and diamonds.

He wasn’t thinking of—this. A man, even one with the feel of power curled beneath his skin, and a voice like a storm rolling in.

“So you're the one they sent this time,” Kurama says, and those red eyes sweep over him carefully, assessing.

“Shisui,” Shisui offers, and tips his chin up, takes a breath. “For the Scourge of the North, aren’t you a little short?”

It takes a long moment for his comment to settle. Incomprehension, confusion, and then disbelief flicker across Kurama’s face, and he _growls_ , sounding just like the ice outside. He stalks forward, right into Shisui's personal space, and grabs the collar of his shirt, hauling him down so their noses are on a level. “Shut your goddamn mouth,” Kurama threatens. “Or I’ll _show_ you why I got that title.”

 _Oh no_ , Shisui thinks, panicked, but it’s for an entirely different reason now. Kurama is _hot_ , in more ways than just the furnace-heat of his skin.

“Is that a sex threat?” he blurts, before he can even think why it might be a bad idea. “Because I didn’t see it specified in the original contract but they always specifically round up the _virgin_ sacrifices, so if you're looking for a particular reaction here—”

“Oh _fuck_ ,” Kurama mutters, and blessedly clamps a hand over Shisui's mouth before he can say anything else. “Shut up, sit down, eat your dinner, and then we’re going to _talk_. All of those words mean exactly what they're fucking supposed to mean. Nod if you understand.”

Grateful, Shisui nods, and Kurama lets go of him, then stalks around to his own chair and sprawls in it, _definitely_ not court-approved posture. Which is a relief, because Shisui's always been kind of terrible at standing up straight. He doesn’t like looming over people, and he’s tended to do a lot of that since he hit his growth spurt as a teenager.

As he sinks down into his own chair, Shisui realizes with surprise that he hasn’t heard the grinding of the ice floes in the last few minutes, and the howling of the wind is muted. Maybe it’s just the weather improving, but—

This might not be so unbearable after all.


End file.
